


Stages of Voice-Possession

by mitzirocker



Series: Metaphysiology [2]
Category: Twitch Plays Pokemon (Let's Play)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-30 22:12:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17232155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzirocker/pseuds/mitzirocker
Summary: The children move in rhythmic jerks, and their eyes bleed purple haze.





	Stages of Voice-Possession

**Author's Note:**

> This post was originally accompanied by a terrible diagram which I have since binned. I've also rephrased it a little.

I say ‘stages’, but it’s more a continuum, fluctuating from day to day, depending on the emotional state of the mob, the personality of their host, how synced the host in question is with the mob, how much they’re warping reality at any given moment (always a little, because bones break and injuries rot and bodies demand fuel and the Voices have enough trouble just training their pokemon), how interested they are in whatever’s happening around them, how psychic any given observer is… Girl A’s good days are Nina’s average and Arty’s lowest points, and the Voices seem to enjoy screwing with expectations, but the Silence is mostly professors and professors need to categorise things, so!

First, a note on the Voices' senses. They sense their environment… weirdly. They are fully aware of everything within a certain radius of their host (a few metres, usually), even if their host is unable to see or otherwise sense it. (Former hosts describe it as a top-down view centred on them, though always with a lot of shrugging and handwaving and ‘It wasn’t really like that but that’s the best way I can put it.’) Voice-vision, as the Silence ended up calling it after they took too long to think of a suitably sciency name and it stuck, is not the most detailed of senses, reacts unpredictably to the outer walls of buildings, tends to fade or die completely in certain cave systems, and is utterly useless outside of its two- or three-metre radius (although the Voices’ highly specific foreknowledge tends to compensate for that.) It also means that the Voices are always much more aware of their environment than is immediately apparent, and when dealing with a host it’s important to remember that.

 **Stage 1**  is the mildest level of possession, usually indicating that the Voices are passively observing events. 90% of the time that means they’re lounging in a pokecentre waiting for their mon to be healed, but it can also happen when the Voices are being held back from full control of their host, whether that’s by the host themself (Jimmy) or by external forces (Baba.) Or it could just mean that the Voices are bored and they’re letting their host take the wheel (all of Touhou/Moe), or they don’t sync well with their current host (D.)

This stage appears fairly close to a vanilla human; the host uses their full syntax and vocabulary, their voice is normal, their movements are often stilted but are obviously human motions, they navigate by sight and hearing and shit instead of Voice-vision. Their eyes are unchanged, except for a faint purple light that can be glimpsed through the pupil. People who look into their eyes sometimes claim that the light seems very distant, much farther away than the depth of the eyeball seems to allow.

Hosts in this stage are unnaturally still compared to regular humans, always a little too stiff or too limp when resting. They talk quickly or in a monotone, forgetting to pause to (pretend to) breathe. They’re slap in the middle of the uncanny valley, and people tend to avoid them without fully realising they’re doing it. Still, they’re not that hard to cope with, especially if you’ve dealt with one of the older fossil gods before.

 **Stage 2**  is the ‘standard’ stage for the later hosts, with the Voices definitely active but still clearly separate from their kid. In this stage, the voices control their hosts by harnessing muscle memory as opposed to 'psychically’ moving them forward; it took them a while to figure out how to do this on command and that is one of the many reasons Red’s journey was a living hell. This is the last stage where fine finger movements, like typing or grasping, are really possible; from here on out it’s clumsy shovel hands all the way.

Stage 2 hosts move sharply and quickly, still under the bounds of human physics but definitely out of human practicalities. They talk quickly, but they use simpler sentences and have a deliberate edge to their speech, sometimes stopping in mid-conversation while three or four separate ideas all try to get out at once. They are always in motion, hands twitching rapidly as the Voices play games with their fingers. They still rely on sight enough that their eyes flick around constantly, but Voice-vision is an important secondary sense. The pupils of their eyes are completely drowned out by the purple light, which spreads along the cracks of the iris. In dark caves, host eyes faintly glow.

Napoleon once described the difference between Stage 2 and S **tage 3**  as the difference between being followed everywhere by a group of annoying assholes and being dragged everywhere by said group of annoying assholes. Stage 3 is where the lines between the Voices and their host begin to blur, where the Voices take full control of the body and all the host can do is influence them and sneak their own movements and words in. Stage 3 is the ‘standard’ stage of the earlier hosts, but the later ones only reach it during intense battles or when their emotions run high, and D never reaches it at all.

In stage 3 the Voices use a mix of muscle memory and individually manipulating their host’s tendons, and while the resulting movements are technically possible within the limits of a human body no human could do them on their own. They are always moving, walking around while they command their teams and wandering off when a conversation bores them. They speak less often, and when they do they speak in short, simple sentences - or they are always talking in a low monotone as the Voices make themselves heard. They don’t quite have the voice of the legion, but there’s an undertone to their speech that would probably unsettle people if it weren’t for everything else. Voice-vision is their primary sense, and Stage 3 hosts will navigate mazes perfectly but find reading incredibly difficult. The purple light overtakes the iris and leaks into the sclera, always buzzing and flickering. Sometimes tendrils of light leap onto the skin.

 **Stage 4**  is never a ‘standard’ stage; when the light spills out of a host’s eyes it means that the Voices are elated or furious or terrified, fully absorbed in their emotions and whatever they’re trying to do. So is the host, but that distinction ceases to be useful; to reach this level at all the Voices and their host must be so in sync that there is no longer a practical difference. Calling them another voice in the mob wouldn’t be accurate, because this is the point where the differences between individual Voices become fuzzier and the mob is (nearly) an individual in its own right.

Stage 4 hosts are controlled purely by tendon manipulation and outright telekinesis; most injuries to a host body not caused by running into things are caused in this stage. They have no patience for anything except whatever their goal is; hosts in this stage are the hosts who run across cities in pursuit of their next battle. They speak in the voices of thousands, and though they say very little they never stop making noise. tThey command their pokemon psychically and sometimes through full mental control. The air around a Stage 4 host crackles with warping reality (in a manner similar but not identical to glitch distortion), enough that normals can be hurt and fossil gods keep their distance. A Stage 4 host’s eyes are completely overtaken by purple haze. It spreads out across the eye sockets and fizzes and crackles without making a sound.

Most hosts only reach S **tage 5**  once or twice in the months they are possessed. Reaching this level requires an almost total synchronisation between both the individual members of the mob and between the Voices and their host and a strong emotional trigger annd significant use of their reality warping abilities. This is the face the Voices wore when they created a pseudodimension for Girl A to beat the Elite Four, when they summoned the gods to remake the main timeline, when they endured the glitches’ first assault long enough for Jirachi to grant Growleerzard’s wish. In this stage the Voices put aside their quarrels and rules and become unstoppable.

Stage 5 hosts do not pretend to need their limbs; they hover in a vortex of power and distortion, powered by the mob’s will alone. They do not speak, but the Voices pour out of them anyway, shouting and laughing and screaming and whooping and chanting, accompanied by waves of pure emotion from those too excited to form words. The Voice-coloured haze roars out of their eyes and across their body, indistinguishable from the distorted reality that surrounds the host’s body. Stage 5 events never last more than five minutes. Most are much shorter, because most start for the same reason.

Every so often a low-ranking grunt in one of the many criminal teams the Voices attract like flies will get the idea to skip the pokemon battle and attack the host directly. Depending on the capabilities of their current host body, the Voices will dodge with impossible skittering movements or summon one of their own pokemon to attack the grunt or knock them out with one well-placed punch if the host is Napoleon. Sometimes, though, the grunt will pull out their gun and attempt to shoot the host.

A minute later, the scene is always the same. Cracked and warped and shattered bullets are scattered all across the area. The grunt’s corpse lies among them, smoking faintly, hands still clutched over burnt-out eyes. The child stands over the body, eyes fully purple, and pronounces, ‘ **N** **o cheating.** ’

The Voices follow their own esoteric rules and codes, interacting in the world in very specific ways that mostly connect back to pokemon. No one knows if this is part of their nature or a choice to keep their games interesting, and no one,  _no one_ , not their hosts, not Bill, not Giovanni or Cyrus or Ghetsis or Lysandre, not the fossil gods, not the Silence, not the glitches, not Arceus Itself, knows what their real limits are.

If, indeed, they have any at all.


End file.
